after 26 years in the united states congress, our colleague, john mccain, has some of the best quick in stinks' -- all of his instincts are quick, but he sizes up situations in foreign matters very, very well. i subscribe generally to the kind of approach is he has advocated throughout this conflict. but beyond that, i have not. >> to me, this is the classic case of a dictator and versus dissidents. i have been increasingly frustrated, disappointed, angry that the u.s. has not been much more proactive in support of the dissidents in syria. both because they were on the side of freedom and then assad started to fire at them. increasingly it became a humanitarian disaster. i don't know that my 24 years in the senate -- this is a case where there is an awful lot of values and strategic interest of our country coming together. the one big one is that assad is the number one friend of our number one enemy, iran. his collapse would be probably a significant and valuable to the regime at the top in tehran as anything we could do. in some ways that would increase our leverage over iran when